Audacity Forum

Hi,

I recently started trying to convert a bunch of old cassette tapes into MP3s for my parents, but I'm encountering a bit of a problem.

I have an old tape deck. I have the RCA to stereo mini cable. I plugged the tape deck into the line-in (blue socket) on the back of my parents' desktop computer and I set the input type to line in. Now when I play a tape in the tape deck, I DO get sound out from the computer speakers. Here's where things go sideways.

I started Audacity, set the preferences so that the playback device is Realtek HD Audio output and the recording device is Realtek HD Audio Input: Line Volume with 2 channels. But when I tell Audacity to start monitoring, hit play on the tape, and hit record in Audacity, nothing records. The tape is playing. I can hear it out of my speakers. But the waveform in Audacity is a straight line and when I play it back it's just dead air.The input volume slider is all the way up too, so I know that's not the issue.

What are my options here to fix this? I've tried changing the recording device in Audacity to basically every available option (line volume, cD volume, mic volume, stereo volume, and Microsoft sound mapper) and none of them work. But all the while the tape will continue to play out the computer speakers as if nothing is wrong.

any help you can provide would be greatly appreciated.

Because I know people will ask, some of the important vitals here are:
Audacity is the latest 1.3 beta. I downloaded it today.
the computer is running Windows XP
I don't specifically know what kind of sound card is in the comp. The machine is ancient (at least 8 years old) and all the device manager will tell me is that it has "Realtek HD Audio" I went to the realtek website and downloaded the newest drivers/codecs I could find on their site for a Win XP machine. The drivers say "R2.67" on the end of the installer, so I dunno if that means anything.

Sorry I can't provide more info. I'm not computer illiterate by any stretch, but I've never had to monkey with audio drivers and whatnot before. I've used audacity plenty of times as well, but mostly to edit existing sound and MP3 files, never recording from an external source before.

thanks again

Is the Line-In turned up in the Windows Volume Control (not a part of Audacity)?

The_Nemesis wrote:I started Audacity, set the preferences so that the playback device is Realtek HD Audio output and the recording device is Realtek HD Audio

I don't specifically know what kind of sound card is in the comp.

The clue was in what you wrote earlier in the post - you have a "Realtek HD" soundcard in your PC.

My XP laptop has one of those too (works fine with Audacity BTW) - you should find a "Realtek HD Audio Manager" piece of software on your PC - it will pop up a blue window with several tabs which enable you to manage the sound on your PC.

On my laptop there is in the tooltray at tthe bottom right of the Windows screen an icon which sort of looks like a reddish loudspeaker with a bracket 9the sound presumably) to the right of it. Annoyingly this sometimes disappears from my tool tray, and I can never figure out why. It can also be accesssed from my XP Control Panel - so I have created a shortcut which lives on my desktop.

The tab you will be most interested in is the "Mixer" tab.

WC

waxcylinder wrote:

The_Nemesis wrote:
The tab you will be most interested in is the "Mixer" tab.

WC

Thank you! that was it exactly. I had played around with a similar looking Realtek window that popped up when I plugged the tape deck in, but I never went into its volume control. The line-in volume was set to mute. So I turned that on and now it works perfectly.

Thanks again for the help.